YouTube’s Late Move to Live Video

YouTube Finally Joins Its Competition

YouTube recently launched live video streaming capabilities allowing users to share live videos from mobile devices, a feature that was previously only available via desktop. These videos will be saved to the YouTube channel and can be made accessible to be searched later on by any user. The video giant is making strides to compete primarily with Facebook, who has shifted gears in 2016 to becoming “video first” as stated by CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Instagram, which is Facebook owned, also has live streaming capabilities available to all users, which adds to the competition that YouTube has with Facebook.

Live video streaming has become increasingly popular opening up new opportunities for tech companies. The biggest opportunity comes with monetizing live videos. Facebook has been hinting that it is working on ways to monetize live videos. Likewise, YouTube has already begun monetizing live videos with the introduction of its new Super Chat feature. Super Chat allows for channels with at least 1,000 subscribers to monetize live videos through special chat messages that users purchase. Users pay for their chat messages to be highlighted above those of others.

Late to the Live Video Party?

Unlike live streaming from sites like Facebook and Twitter, YouTube live video streaming from a mobile device is temporarily only available to channels that have more than 10,000 subscribers. YouTube’s plan is for the feature to be rolled out to others soon, but no timeline has been given. It’s interesting enough that YouTube, who is known for video, is a little behind when it comes to the mobile aspect of live videos. It is apparent that YouTube wants to compete with Facebook in terms of live video, but the obvious question remains. How does YouTube plan to make its push for live video different? What is YouTube’s reasoning for waiting this long to launch mobile live streaming? This is certainly something to keep an eye out for.

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